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Trotskyist Opposition Mar 1928 TROTJKY 3W3JIIION Itr j fcr/WBJCflN WORKERS Bertram D. Mfolfe 31 WRECKING THE LABOR BANKS By WM. Z. FOSTER A snap-shot of the reaction- ary labor officialdom in an orgy of looting the treasun of the B. of L. E. 25 CENTS MISLEADERS OF LABOR By WM. Z. FOSTER Cloth — $1.75 Paper — $1.25 - WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS 39 EAST 125th STREET NEW YORK CITY ^553645 A TR3TIKY 3W9J1IION ANDICAN WOBKEDS Bertram D. Wolfe 31 WRECKING THE LABOR BANKS By WM. Z. FOSTER A snap-shot of the reaction- ary labor officialdom in an orgy of looting the treasun of the B. of L. E. 25 CENTS MISLEADERS OF LABOR By WM. Z. FOSTER Cloth — $1.75 Paper — $1.25 m: WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS 39 EAST 125th STREET NEW YORK CITY WORKERS LIBRARY Dumber 5 ERRATA P. 2. (facing fly-leaf), last line. "50c" should be "20." P. 5. Table of Contents. No. 9. "The Question of the Chinese Opposition" should be "The Question of the Chinese Revolution." P. 22. Line 26, last word, "the" should be "an." Line 27, first word, "first" should be "important." The TROTSKY OPPOSITION Its Significance for American Workers \$5 THE WORKERS LIBRARY No. 1—THE TENTH YEAR — The Rise and Achievements of Soviet Russia (1917-1927) By J. Louis ENGDAHL . 10 CENTS No. 2—THE COOLIDGE PROGRAM — Capitalist Democracy and Prosperity Exposed By JAY LOVESTONE 5 CENTS No. 3—QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TO AMERI- CAN TRADE UNIONISTS—Stalin's Interview with tfie First American Trade Union Delegation to Soviet Russia 25 CENTS No. 4—1928 —THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND THE WORKERS By JAY LOVESTONE 50 CENTS The TROTSKY OPPOSITION Significance for American Workers By BERTRAM D. WOLFE WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS 39 EAST 125™ STREET NEW YCRK Copyright 1928 by WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, INC. Printed in the U. S. A, '81 CONTENTS PARTI THE TROTSKY OPPOSITION PAGE 1. Leaders and Controversies 7 2. What Caused the Crisis 11 3. The Nature of the Opposition Block 17 4. The Political Theory of the Opposition 23 5. The Economic Theory of the Opposition 29 6. The Practical Proposals of the Opposition 34 7. The Opposition and the Party 41 8. The Opposition and the C. I. 47 9. The Question of the Chinese Opposition 50 10. The Defense of the. Soviet Union 54 PART II AMERICA DISCUSSES THE OPPOSITION 1. Typical Viewpoints 58 2. The Gossip of Max Eastman 64 3. Lore's Bridge to Socialism 73 4. Salutsky Earns His Hire 81 5. Abramovich Gives the Socialist View 84 * 6. What the Liberals "Think" 90 7. Trotskyism As A "Jewish" Issue 93 We take the occasion of the publi- cation of No. 5 of the Workers 'Lib- rary to express our gratitude to Com- rades BERTHA and SAMUEL RUBIN of Minneapolis, Minn., who, together with a group of other comrades and sympathizers, have made it possible for the Workers Library Publishers to carry on its work. The Trotsky Opposition Its Significance for American Workers By BERTRAM D. WOLFE CHAPTER I. LEADERS AND CONTROVERSIES The differences in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are of such character that they involve the course and future of that Party and the country which it guides. They also involve the policy and the fate of the Communist Inter- national, leader of the world working class. Many workers approach the controversy from the stand- point of personal feelings, of sentimental attachment to this or that leader and find it very difficult for these reasons to see the fundamental political questions involved. Therefore, it is necessary to say a word about the role of personalities and leaders in a revolutionary movement. Revolutionary movements involve swift and rapid change. He who today is followed, tomorrow may be without a fol- lowing. He who today is loved, tomorrow may be fought. The history of all revolutions is full of examples of rapid change, the failure of certain persons to keep pace with that change, and the rapidity and remorselessness with which his- tory sweeps them aside. There is the example of PlechanofF, founder of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, Marxist theoretician, and leader of that movement for many years, and yet when the time came that he failed to lead aright, then history swept by him and the masses rejected his leadership. There was the case of Kautsky. Today it is easy for the conscious worker to see that he is an enemy of the working class. But when Kautsky first began to lead in the wrong [7] 8 THE TROTSKY OPPOSITION direction, it was hard for many workers blinded by personal attachment and by sentiment to believe that one who had done so much and served so long could become a renegade. So, too, many politically backward workers find it hard to think clearly about Trotsky and Zinoviev. They use the meth- ods of hero-worship rather than the methods of political analysis. It is hard for them to believe that Trotsky and Zinoviev have come to represent a tendency hostile to the interests of the working class, as it was hard for admirers of Kautsky to believe that of him in 1914, or for admirers of Plechanoff to believe it of him when he ceased to lead in the right direction. Therefore, in considering the controversy in the Commu- nist Party of the Soviet Union, it is necessary for workers to strip themselves of personal prejudices in favor of one or an- other individual and to examine closely the political questions involved and the tendencies that each individual represents. We must see beyond persons to politics, beyond eloquence and blinding phrases to their content, beyond the subjective inten- tions of individuals to the actual objective direction in which they are leading. Nor is it sufficient to note that Zinoviev and Trotsky still swear loyalty to Leninism, while they are attacking the prin- ciples that it represents. The revision of Marxism by Bern- stein and other revisionists was carried on under the slogan of "saving Marxism" precisely as the present revision of Lenin- ism by the Opposition is carried on under the slogan of re- storing the principles of "true Leninism." In short, neither words nor personalities are to be considered, but the direction in which the proposals of the Opposition would lead the work- ing class of the Soviet Union and of the world. CONTROVERSIES IN CAPITALIST PARTIES A word about faction fights. Controversies concerning policies occur in all parties. This is true of capitalist parties as well as working class parties. In the Republican Party (limiting ourselves to recent times) we have had the La Fol- lette-Coolidge controversy and the Roosevelt-Taft contro- THE TROTSKY OPPOSITION 9 versy. Now we have the faction called the Progressive Bloc. The same is true of the Democratic Party. The Smith-Mc- Adoo fight of 1924 will serve as an example. To the superficial observer these appear to be merely per- sonal struggles for leadership. But even in the capitalist parties, this is not so. They represent political differences on program, due primarily to two things: 1. The necessity of a party's changing its program to meet changing conditions. 2. The class composition of the capitalist parties. (For example, the Republican Party is a party of big business, but it has a large Western farmer and petty-bourgeois following which exerts pressure for the incorporation of their own in- terests in the program.) DIFFERENCES IN A WORKERS' PARTY A Communist Party is far more homogeneous in its class character than the Republican or the Democratic Party. Nev- ertheless, even the working class is not homogeneous. There are various strata or layers in the working class. There are skilled workers and unskilled workers. There are recently declassed elements from other classes, who have become a part of the labor movement. A working class party does not operate in a vacuum, but operates in a world in which other classes exist. Some ele- ments of a working class party are more responsive to the pressure of the viewpoint of other classes than are other ele- ments. Sometimes by reading the capitalist press, sometimes by association with members of other classes, sometimes from members of one's family or from friends, sometimes by con- tact with the bureaucracy of the trade unions and even while in struggle against it—in short, in all sorts of ways some members of the working class parties are affected by and express the pressure of other sections of the population upon their method of thinking. They thus bring into the working class party the viewpoints of other classes, although they genuinely believe that they are expressing the working class viewpoint. 10 THE TROTSKY OPPOSITION Many workers believe that if Lenin were alive, there would not now be such a controversy in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is not so. The history of the German labor movement while Marx was its leader and the history of the Russian labor movement while Lenin was its leader are full or records of such controversies. MARX AND HIS OPPONENTS Thus, while Marx was alive, than whom no man had more authority in the revolutionary movement of his day, there were continuous controversies between the tendency that he represented and contrary tendencies. One need only mention the bitter controversy between Marx and Bakunin, between Marx and Proudhon, between Marx and Lasalle, between Engels and Duhring, or, after the death of Marx, between the Revisionists and the Marxists, to see that the whole history of the movement that built up the Second International was a history of such controversies about fundamental political differences.
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